


do not go gentle

by soundofez



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: (i'm not sorry), Angst, F/M, I'm Sorry, SoMa Week 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 18:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6669529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundofez/pseuds/soundofez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>but tell me, have I lost my mind?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>They go on adventures together, the little girl and her scythe, chasing monsters and dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	do not go gentle

They forget after mission upon mission of clean slices and neat strokes, of near misses that vanish in hindsight like smoke. They come home triumphant, these returning heroes. They are children, flushed with danger and success, and they are immortal.

Marie Mjolnir never forgets. Marie, who dove headfirst into battle with and without a meister, who watches students flock to the assignment boards, who dreads the inevitability of her offspring entering her alma mater, cannot forget the danger or the near misses when she is plagued by as many nightmares as her meister is.

Marie has a story for her children and their children, a story that she can never tell her students, a story of a weapon and a meister who succeeded until they failed.

* * *

"Don't die," Maka begs her weapon, and she's said these words once before, but Marie knew her then as only a small pigtailed bundle in Spirit's arms. "I need you," Maka doesn't say, but the words haunt her lips and line her soul, just as they line Marie's.

"Stupid," Maka cries, and "Witless idiot," but she is desperate as she has been only once before, and Marie feels Soul smiling (or trying to), just as she feels how far forward Franken needs to bend to avoid an attack from the pre-kishin behind them, just as she feels herself spinning in Franken's grip to block an attack from the witch before them.

"I'yit y'self," Marie hears Soul slur, his droopy eyes drooping more than usual.

Maka's hands tighten over Soul's. "Don't close your eyes," she hisses. " _Keep your eyes on me._ "

They know those words, all four of them, words that they've heard before in time spent tangled together, two and two, drowning in one another's pleasure. They fall from Maka's mouth like a plea hinting at a command, and Soul's eyes flicker, just so, with their intensity. "'M tired," he mumbles back. "C'n I sleep?"

They don't have time to stop, Marie knows, are barely fighting off their antagonists now, when half their souls are being consumed by pain and terror, but her soul cries out for Franken to save them, to save their students, and receives a quiet, focused _Working on it_ in return. _Keep up, Marie._ Her name in his soul is tinged with other feelings, though, feelings that he rarely ever articulates, feelings like _love_ and _friend_ and _I adore you_ , amplified by their resonance with Soul and Maka.

" _No,_ " Maka calls, commands, as much person to partner as meister to weapon, for these two identities are intertwined. "You can't sleep, Soul. Please."

Her soul feels as though it is fracturing with her voice, and Soul reacts, his soul sinking further into resonance as though trying to embrace his partner. "Sorry," he whispers. "'M... r'lly tired."

They feel Soul go, all four/three of them, falling away and tearing a hole in his wake.

* * *

Marie sees the ghost of Soul in the weeks that follow, lurking around corners and in the deepest shadows of her soul, echoing Maka's last words to him: " _You can't sleep, Soul. Please._ "

Neither Marie nor Franken slept well in the first place, no matter that all of their children have inherited Marie's wavelength. Marie can never forget that death looms closer than the god they serve, and Franken is plagued with madness that persists, held at bay but never extinguished. Soul lingers in their souls like a phantom limb, a constant absence, compounding Marie's worries and Franken's madness.

Maka haunts the infirmary where Soul's body rests, breathing but unwaking, his soul a dim glow but still present, she insists. Franken has raised the dead before, she argues, but the Sid that teaches now has no memories of the Sid who taught before, and it is with this in mind that he and Mira and Franken all caution Maka and the new Lord Death.

Maka demands her partner returned to her every second she spends with anyone but Soul, as though they are merely withholding him from her, but Lord Death is more hesitant.

"He won't be the same," the god who was once called Death the Kid reminds her, sorrowful. "He won't be the same one who gave you a little one."

Maka's hands lift to her belly, and Franken confirms that a second soul grows within the girl— but she is a woman, now, Marie realizes. " _I need you,_ " Maka hadn't said. " ** _We_** _need you,_ " she had wanted to say, and Marie tells the story of the Albarn-Evanses to her children, and to the child who wonders where their father is.

**Author's Note:**

> cross posted to tumblr [[x](http://soundofez.tumblr.com/post/143455423628/)]


End file.
